Tuesday, January 02, 2007

When I’d eaten them, I’d felt as if I were tasting chocolate for the first time; or, BSC #43: Stacey’s Emergency

Okay, in a previous lesson, we learned the truth about Stacey: she’s a diabetic, and a skanky bitch…in this book, we learn that it’s soooo hard being Stacey. Not only are her parents divorced but she also has to deal with her disease. And it’s hard!

Yeah, in this book, Stacey can’t deal with all the stress of being put between her parents, coping with her schoolwork, dealing with small chilluns, and maintaining her diet…so, she slips up and starts sneaking chocolate…and she gets really sick and ends up in the hospital…I guess it’s like the cover says, “Stacey just can’t win.”

Blah. This one’s a whiny one full of Stacey being thoughtful, which she really shouldn’t bother. ‘Cause, with apologies to the Housemartins, she’s not deep.

A few salient points:

For many years, my hair looked very much like hers on the cover of this book.

So, Stacey’s tired all the time, and thirsty and hungry and she’s not feeling well…but she doesn’t tell her mom, cause her mom’s been through enough in the past few months…Um, seriously, you have a DISEASE that requires constant monitoring! Talk to your mom, bitch!

Ah, realistic time frames: Stacey moves to Stoneybrook just before 7th grade. Then, in the middle of 8th grade, they move back to NYC. A few months later, the divorce, and the move back to S-town. And that was apparently a few months before this book takes place…It seems a little…rushed, no?

”…we are both pretty sophisticated for thirteen [gee, could Stacey be talking about herself and Claud? I think so…]. We wear really fresh clothes—leggings, cowboy boots, oversized shirts, hats (Claud wears hats more than I do), and wild jewelry.” Oddly enough, I saw a whole lot of clothing matching that description while I waited for hours and hours during my layover at JFK. [BTW, Delta hates me and my luggage.]

Oh, yeah, Claud and Stacey like action! Since when, I’m not sure…but I do know that Mary Poppins is all about the action!

Okay, professional soapbox time: now, y’all know I’m a librarian [RNL, I’m totally blaming you for the addition of y’all to my vocabulary, and it’s your job to shoot me if I ever actually use “yinz” seriously.], and I’m not usually “oh, librarian stereotypes are bad, m’kay,” mainly cause I look like your standard hipster librarian, and my hip-kid librarian posse all fall into the same category…we look fairly bookish with an indie-ish bent, and we swear more than you’d suspect, but whatever…However, I really, really hate how ANM is always “Claud’s mom disapproves of Nancy Drew cause she’s a librarian…” Shut up, bitch! Claud is what we [well, not me, cause I’m a cataloger, but teen and youth librarians and the like] call a “reluctant reader,” and librarians don’t care what they’re reading, as long as they’re reading! Aside from which, Nancy Drew is hardly the type of book that anyone should really strongly object to! [Sorry, for the bad grammar, but I’m ranting here!] Okay, I can see Claud hiding V.C. Andrews books or Harlequins or whatever, but Nancy Drew is clean and wholesome, and actually kind of falls into the “classics” category, if you’re looking at the ones written in the 1930s. Phew. Sorry, sometimes I get going on the librarianing rants, I know. Now, go watch Party Girl!

I’m so sick of the whole “Mal feels ugly!” thing. Yes, she’s at an awkward age, but so is every other fucking girl in the BSC. I have a really hard time believing that all the “older” girls have already completely dealt with their body-image issues…Bitch, please!

Cootie Catchers? Okay, so I think these are yr basic fortune teller thing, but Mal & Jessy were totally doing it wrong…it’s not eenie meenie miney moe…It’s far more complicated, with colors and numbers, right? I made one, just now [I still remember how, because when I was in college a few years back, my friends and I used to make them all the time. And play MASH. While chainsmoking. And including professions like “fluffer” and “jizz mopper” and PATransit bus driver. Cause maturity has always been one of my strong points. Oooh, and we used to put fortunes like “You will be a teen-pop-superstar!” Or, “You will make out with Dean Wareham Boy!” Or, “You will get in touch with your inner Richard Marx!”{Probably better not to ask.}] But I can’t remember whether the numbers go on the outside, or the colors…

Heh, Stacey’s dad calls her “Boontsie.”

Wow, Stacey knows her clichés! Observe: “And I was wondering what would happen if one day I said to my father, ‘Mom’s out with someone. A man He’s taking her to dinner. He’s really handsome, he has a very important job, and he’s never been married. He’s saving himself for the perfect woman, and that perfect woman is Mom.’ Or what would happen if I said to my mother some Sunday night when she was grilling me about my weekend in New York with Dad, ‘Mom, you should see who Dad’s dating. She’s this sophisticated, beautiful, younger woman. She’s terribly wealthy, she has a penthouse apartment in the city and a horse farm in the country. And she can cook and handle a jigsaw.” When did Stacey start ghostwriting for Danielle Steel? Is she producing Lifetime movies? Also, she’s going to be a little disappointed when she wonders into the world of adult relationships with those expectations.

The cover illustrates an actual event in the book! Again! Martian fudge makers! Stupid! The real cover should have looked like the picture of the one twin from America’s Next Top Model eating the food on the toilet…What with the sneaking chocolate…you know where I’m going with this, right?

Oh, yeah, Charlotte gets all hypochondriac when Stacey goes in the hospital. Cause those two are waaaaay too attached.

Oh, the big SMS gossip: Cokie got a nose job.

Stacey sits her parents down and tells them to quit putting her in the middle. And, because we have entered a fairy-tale-utopia, it works. The end.

41 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Ah yes, the current 80's revival. I will be SO happy when that is over with, but I did spend a happy few hours at the Mall of America this weekend looking at clothes and going, "what is it?" But blouson shirts do no one any favors.

Who is this Cokie bitch? I don't remember her at all. Is she some kind of subtle drug reference? I'm suprised the BS didn't hold a 'love the body you're in' fundraiser in objection (headed of course, by that hippy skank Dawn).

Although it isn't relevant to the BSC at all, my favorite MASH fortune included how many affairs I would have, and how and when I would pass away. (12 affairs during 7 years of marriage, and killed at 56 during a drive-by shooting.) Yes, my friends and I were a little strange.

My friends, dorks as we were, wanted to put every possible type of dwelling into our game, so we called it MATSCH for mansion, appartment, tent, shack, cardboard box, and house. And we had about 85 categories including when, where and how we lost our virginity.

We used to play this skipping rhyme game which I don't know if it was related to these others, but it sounds similar. As you jump the rope, you sing the rhyme thing, and where it lands is what you get. I only remember these two song bits though:

Where will you get married? Church, pigsty, toilet [and repeat til you land on one of them]What will you wear? Wedding dress, bikini, nothing [ditto]

Cokie is the dumb skank that tried to steal Logan away in "Mary Anne Misses Logan" (creative title)...but it doesn't work! I just finished reading that one. MA prevails and Cokie looks like a dumbshit...

This is the best web site ever! I think you should recap the book where Claudia pulls her finger out and studies for a maths test. But then a smart girl in the class copies her and they finish up with identical test marks. And everyone thinks Claudia was the one who copied because she's dumb. So the BSC break into the smart girl's locker in search of a smoking gun and they totally find one! It's a note that says something like "Congratulations on your A. Who would have thought C. K. 's paper would have so many correct answers?" Then that annoying hippie Dawn points out that they can't use their smoking gun because they acquired it through foul play. I can't remember what happened after that.

i hate to get all serious here but i was a kid that was sick most of the time, and then i developed an illness when i was 15 where i was very sick... so the whole thing about stacey not telling her mom is completely understandable. i am an adult, but sometimes i put off telling my mom when i feel bad so she won't worry.

I've been reading your blog for a while, but now I'm compelled to comment. I just got my MLS. I'm so glad a librarian is finally calling out Claud's mom. If you need back up, I'm there. Getting Claud to read anything is practically a miracle. And no librarian worth her salt would dare question Nancy Drew. The dumb part is, if anyone knows librarians, it's ANM, how many ALA conventions has she been to, dozens?

I am unbelievabley THRILLED that I found this site! I knew there were people out there who loved the BSC as much as I did (do?). I am hoping that someone can help me...I am writing an essay on how the BSC influenced my life, and I need help with an obscure reference. I recall once VERY brief moment where the girls discover that Mary Anne is wearing her first bra...I think it was very, very early in the series, probably somewhere in books 1-9...I think they notice it at a meeting and giggle or something and then it is never mentioned again...Does anyone out there know which book that was??

I have another question already...I know that Claudia has her first kiss at Camp Mohawk in the Summer Super Special, but doesn't another girl get a kiss at that same camp dance? Which girl was it and who did she kiss? I could call my mom and have her dig my collection out of my childhood closet to look it up, but hopefully this will be faster!

we used to play lemon - 4 columns (boys, things you do to a lemon, girls, body parts) or you could switch boys and girls. then you randomly number them and read the outcomes. example: chris squeezes jenny's boob. it was excellent. and it got quite risque i might add. anybody else play this game?

I was just rec'd here and have been reading back and wanted to post how much these have made me laugh! I'm supposed to be studying for finals, and instead am cracking up in the library, trying to disguise it as a cough. ;o)

Anyway, this is one book I actually remember details of, especially Charlotte's hypochondria. I loved this one, actually...but I'm so afraid to reread these...they may ruin my childhood memories. Hee!

I totally got your reference to America's Next Top Model... I managed to get my boyfriend hooked on that same season with the twins. ha![by the way, I'm loving reading your blog... the BSC was my lifeline when I was a) a child of divorce, age 7 b) forcibly moved across the country from New England to Charlotte c) an "artist" who loved junk food and weird clothes and d) had no money for books, but lived near a great library that developed my reading habits. Oh, and a mom who was a librarian for years kinda helped with that last bit too. :-P ]

wow tiff you have serrioussss psychological problems..what kind of person devotes soo much time ( clearly you have judging from all the work youve put into the site and analysing each book) .to something they hate soo much??? youre a fukin wierdooo who obviously has nothing better to do than hate wow wow wow youre funny at times but otherwise you just sound like an ugly fat nerd who sits infront of her comp to critisize the BSC wow you r sriousslyyy the biggeesttt mst obssesssdd looser ive met!!!!!

So this post is about a year old, but I just discovered your blog through another link on a Top Model LJ community. I finally get to this entry, and you reference ANTM. The cycle is complete. Now I can die happy.

Major Point 1: There are no real happy endings when divorce is the cause of the end. Not when the same people are involved, anyway.

Major Point 2: In one of the early BSC books, Stacey can't eat pizza because of the processed cheese. Doesn't she eat pizza in every book after this? I forget and only have one regular BSC book around these days, but this seems like a very big deal since the diabetes is described in every single book, even the non-Stacey ones.

Major Point 3: Stacey sneaks chocolate and various other things, but she has DIABETES. When she admits to sneaking chocolate, SHE DOES NOT GET INTO TROUBLE. Why? Because she's in the BSC and as long as you're hot, you can do anything! Um, it's a big deal that the McGill parents can't pop out another kid, so they're way protective of the one they have, and that one happens to have a very serious, potentially fatal disease. If her parents really cared about her, they would ground her for life and force her out of the BSC because the meetings take place in Claudia's, the human trash chute, room. Surrounded by temptation and yet they allow their stupid teenager into the room three times a week despite her disease. Stacey's never yelled at, though, and I almost want to force a whole chocolate cake into her so she'll really suffer and maybe learn a lesson. Like, don't do things you know are bad for you, and if you want to be treated as an adult (like not put into the middle of parental disputes--yay, big words at 4 A.M.!) you should talk out your issues instead of doing a half-assed suicide. Just sayin'.